Official FCC Blog

The FCC and the Knight Foundation have partnered up for a competition to build apps to make cities more livable! As developers and communities’ use the last few weeks of summers to finish their entries for the Apps for Communities Challenge, it’s time to announce the impressive panel of judges who will be reviewing and scoring those entries. We are honored to have investors, technologist, civic leaders, entrepreneurs, and philanthropist who have agreed to server as judges for the competition; which ends October 3. Without further ado, the judges are:

Marc Andreessen is a noted investor in information technology. He previously developed the web browser Mosaic and co-founded the company Netscape; he is an investor in numerous technology startups including Digg and Twitter; and he serves on the boards of Facebook, eBay and Hewlett-Packard (among others).

DonorsChoose.org is a website that allows people to donate directly to specific projects in schools and classrooms. It was started in 2000 by Charles Best, when he was a teacher at a public high school in the Bronx. Since then, it has grown to serve all the public schools throughout the United States. As of August 2010, more than $55 million dollars had been donated to over 138,000 projects, helping more than 3,400,000 students in need.

Today, the FCC released a wireless backhaul item that implements key recommendations of the National Broadband Plan, by removing outdated regulatory barriers and unleashing additional spectrum for broadband services. The FCC’s actions will stimulate additional opportunities for broadband deployment, especially in rural America.

Wireless backhaul facilities carry voice and data communications from cell sites, businesses, wireless internet access points and other facilities to the public telephone network and the Internet. Wireless technology is an increasingly important source of backhaul, as the overall demand for backhaul capacity continues to rise. In some rural and remote locations, fixed microwave links may be the only practical option for backhaul. Finding new opportunities to use wireless backhaul, and ways to use it more effectively, will help to solve the broadband capacity puzzle as more Americans use smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other devices to browse the web, use email, and download applications wirelessly.

The wireless backhaul Report & Order takes several actions, including:

On July 11, 2011, the President issued an executive order to the heads of all independent agencies, including the FCC. The new executive order builds on the President's January 2011 Executive Order on Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review, and asks independent agencies to conduct both retrospective and prospective regulatory analyses, consistent with law.

In a recent communication to staff, Chairman Genachowski said the agency would act in accordance with the new executive order, and that he expects all FCC Bureaus and Offices will perform their responsibilities consistent with the order. The Chairman asked me to oversee development of a plan to follow up on this directive.

The President's directives are consistent with the values and philosophy we apply here at the FCC. In a press conference following the release of the July 11 Executive Order, Cass Sunstein, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in OMB, noted that the FCC has a robust regulatory review process in place. Under Chairman Genachowski's leadership, we are proud of the progress we have made so far.

We're focusing on developing innovative market-based policies that help advance important policy goals, such as Incentive Auctions for repurposing spectrum; increasing the flexible use of spectrum; and market-based mechanisms to more efficiently and effectively distribute Universal Service Fund support.

We've responded to calls from industry to review our rules and initiated proceedings on Retransmission Consent, and on Out-of-Band Emissions in the Broadband Radio Service (BRS) and Educational Broadband Service (EBS) bands to permit operators to use licensed spectrum more efficiently.

Since we voted unanimously in February to frame a path forward for fiscally responsible reform of the Universal Service Fund’s high-cost program and intercarrier compensation system, the Commission has been diligently reviewing comments, engaging with stakeholders, crunching numbers, and refining proposals. Three public workshops were held, including one in Nebraska. And we’ve met with the diverse participants in the universal service and intercarrier compensation system, including state officials; consumer advocates; phone companies and broadband providers of all sizes; Internet content and application developers; and many others. Indeed, since February, the staff and Commissioners have held more than 400 stakeholder meetings on these issues and we’ve received more than 900 comments.

As part of this effort, we challenged stakeholders to come to us with serious proposals that reflected the core principles set forth in February. We are pleased that several parties, including the state members of the Joint Board on Universal Service and a group of large and small telephone companies and associations, have worked hard to present comprehensive reform proposals.

To assist in our review of these and other proposals, last week the Wireline and Wireless Bureaus released a Public Notice requesting comment on specific aspects of the proposals and on additional issues that are not fully developed in the record. We encourage parties to focus their feedback on the specific questions the Bureaus have raised.

This morning FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the winners of the agency’s latest contest on Challenge.gov, a competition for scientists and software developers to engage in innovative research and create useful apps that further the understanding of Internet connectivity and network science. A video of the Chairman’s remarks and the award presentation are available.

The three winning teams were recognized at a ceremony with remarks by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski at FCC headquarters in Washington, D.C. The winning teams also presented their apps and research to the Commission.

The three winning teams are University of Michigan & Microsoft Research; School of Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology; and The ICSI (International Computer Science Institute) Netalyzr Project. Descriptions of the winning entries are detailed below.

The Open Internet Challenge sought to encourage the development of innovative and functional applications that provide users with information about the extent to which their fixed or mobile broadband Internet services are consistent with the open Internet. The research component of the challenge sought academic papers that analyze relevant Internet openness measurements, techniques, and data. The challenge was designed to encourage and reward the creation innovative and useful research.

The challenge is posted on Challenge.gov, a new website and digital platform where entrepreneurs, innovators, and citizen solvers can compete for prizes by providing novel solutions to problems large and small. Details of the challenge are posted.

A quick trip, last week, to Massachusetts gave me another opportunity to learn about activities outside of the Beltway that promote three important initiatives: greater diversity in traditional and new media outlets, open Internet, and wider broadband adoption.

My first stop was to the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, located on the Harvard Law School campus, in Cambridge. The Center considers itself an entrepreneurial non-profit whose mission “is to explore and understand cyberspace; to study its development, dynamics, norms, and standards; and to assess the need or lack thereof for laws and sanctions.” It enjoys a world wide reputation for ground breaking scholarship. During the development of the National Broadband Plan, the Commission asked the Berkman Center to conduct an independent expert review of the broadband deployment plans pursued by other market oriented democratic countries in the transition to the next generation of connectivity. One of the Berkman Center’s founders, Professor Jonathan Zittrain, is currently the FCC’s Distinguished Scholar.

This was my first visit to the Center, and Managing Director Colin Maclay organized a terrific roundtable discussion to introduce me to some of the fellows, faculty, and staff that contribute to the incredible work they do. These folks quickly impressed me not only with their dedication and intellect, but also with their charm and humor. I was particularly excited to learn that the Center and I share mutual interests in: creating more opportunities for diverse programming of high quality; promoting an open and free Internet; and, educating our Nation’s youth on how best to harness and protect the creative possibilities of their interactions in cyber space.

I am delighted to be able to say that the FCC has launched the Attorney Honors Program. Our program is a two-year employment and training program designed to introduce new and recent law school graduates to the field of communications law and policy. We are accepting applications from law students in their final year of study and judicial clerks serving in the 2011-12 judicial term for openings in the Fall 2012 class. Applications must be received by September 23, 2011.

Many prior Honors Program participants are still here at the FCC and have assumed positions of leadership, advised Commissioners, defended the agency before federal appellate courts, and led teams working on some of the most challenging problems before the agency. Others have taken opportunities at private companies, law firms, public interest organizations, and on the Hill. The Program aims to prepare new attorneys for the greatest challenges of communications law practice in the context of doing the work of the agency and serving the public interest. Consider applying. Visit our Attorney Honors Program page for more information, eligibility criteria, and applications instructions.

Public dot-gov sites are playing a big role in delivering on the promises of open government. As many people know, government sites -- WhiteHouse.gov for example -- are becoming active participants in this conversation between citizens, developers and dot gov teams. We’re proud that the new FCC.gov has been able to contribute, and we wanted to give an overview of the community-driven features that power our site.

While the open-source platform offers many features on its own, we’re leveraging other Drupal add-ons, commonly known as “modules,” to add functionality. Modules can either be purpose-built for a particular site, or taken from a common repository of open-source, community-contributed modules. Think of it as the difference between creating your own recipe and using one from your favorite cookbook. On the new FCC.gov, we use a mix of both custom and contributed modules.

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:98:height=98,width=70]]Now that the summer season is in full swing, many of us will be traveling abroad. So, the FCC has designated the week of July 18th as the second annual Wireless World Travel Week. During this week, we are providing tips and information on “roaming” with your mobile telephone, for Americans heading abroad on vacation or other international travel. Roaming means that you are not using your local carrier any more, but your phone continues to work seamlessly on another company’s network as it moves with you. We are also offering tips on making international phone calls from the U.S. These tips focus on how to dial such calls, and how to find the cheapest rates. They are available on our Wireless World Travel page.

Roaming. You may find it helpful to use your mobile phone as you travel. For example, you can call home, check e-mail, and access data. But, you need to do some homework before your trip to make the most of your mobile device abroad, and avoid unhappy surprises. If you don’t, you may find that your mobile phone is not compatible with the local network, or you may incur high charges that you won’t know about until you return home.

The key fact is that roaming is complicated. So check with your service provider to verify that your mobile phone will work where you’re going, and find out the rates you’ll pay for using it. You may want to ask about rates for four different uses while abroad:

Things are heating up in Washington. Of course, we’re not referring to the ongoing negotiations over the debt ceiling, or even the 100-degree temperatures expected later this week. We’re talking about spectrum policy.

Last week, Republican and Democrat leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee introduced discussion drafts of legislation that would allow the FCC to hold “voluntary incentive auctions” for rights to use electromagnetic spectrum—the airwaves. The draft bills follow bipartisan legislation passed by the Senate Commerce Committee last month.

Never mind the heat—it’s wonky talk like this that keeps people away from Washington in the summer (or all year round, for that matter). But actually, a very simple and powerful idea animates the proposed legislation.

Gordon Crovitz of the Wall Street Journal explained it lucidly in his column yesterday.

One of the FCC’s main responsibilities is to grant licenses to use spectrum. For many years, the agency determined the “best” licensee through an administrative process. In 1993, Congress granted the FCC authority to hold spectrum auctions. Nearly two decades later, FCC auctions have spurred hundreds of billions of dollars of private investment in wireless networks and generated over $50 billion in proceeds for the Treasury.

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